I Learned I Was Making $10,000 Less Than My White Physician Colleague — Here's How I Negotiated a Raise on the Spot!

She asked me how much I make.

I was shocked.

I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about that.

When I was in private practice, my office was next to another physician — a white woman whose father was also a doctor. She had something I didn’t: A guide through the system. Generational wealth. And the kind of safety net that changes everything.

But she wasn’t stingy with her privilege. She was the definition of an ally.

One day, she looked at me and asked, “How much do you make?”

I hesitated. I told her what I earned.

She blinked and said, “That doesn’t make sense — I make $10,000 more than you — and you have more experience.”

Then she asked, “Are they paying your student loans?”

I said, “No.”

She said, “They’re paying $20,000 a year toward mine.”

She got angry.

She literally threw down her stethoscope and said, “You’re walking into that chairman’s office and telling him you won’t see another patient until they fix this.”

I was terrified.

Divorced, raising my kids alone, just trying to stay afloat.

But I did it anyway.

I walked into that office, voice trembling, and said, “I’d like a raise and student-loan repayment.”

The chairman looked up and said, “Okay.”

And just like that — it showed up on my next paycheck.

What a difference an ally makes.

What That Moment Taught Me

That conversation changed more than my paycheck — it changed my perspective.

It taught me that silence protects systems, not people.

It taught me that “taboo” topics like money and pay are how inequity hides in plain sight.

And it reminded me that transparency isn’t unprofessional — it’s a form of advocacy.

Because here’s what the data tells us:

- Female physicians earn about 74 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earn (The Commonwealth Fund, 2022).

- White male physicians have median incomes around $253,000, while Black male physicians—doing the same kind of work — average around $188,000 (STAT News, 2016).

- White female physicians earn roughly $163,000, while Black female physicians average $152,000 (STAT News, 2016).

- Even when controlling for specialty, rank, and experience, women of all races and men of color earn less than White men in academic medicine (AAMC, 2022).

- In one national study of 19,000 U.S. physicians, African-American physicians earned significantly less than White physicians, even after adjustments for specialty (Nunez-Smith et al., 2019).

Women physicians, especially Black women physicians, are too often told to be grateful just to be at the table. But gratitude doesn’t pay student loans. It doesn’t close the pay gap. And it doesn’t fix a system that was never built with us in mind.

My colleague understood something I didn’t yet know: You can’t negotiate what you don’t know exists.

When we talk about money — openly, honestly, without shame — we take some control back.

We shine a light on the disparities and remind institutions that fairness shouldn’t depend on who feels comfortable speaking up.

For me, it wasn’t just about the money. It was about reclaiming my voice.

And if one conversation can do that for me, imagine what could happen if we all started telling the truth about what we earn.

Works Cited

• AAMC. (2022). New Report Finds Wide Pay Disparities for Physicians by Gender, Race, and Ethnicity. Association of American Medical Colleges. https://www.aamc.org/news/new-report-finds-wide-pay-disparities-physicians-gender-race-and-ethnicity
• Nunez-Smith M., et al. (2019). Racial Pay Gaps in Physician Compensation: An Analysis of the U.S. Workforce. JAMA Network Open, 2(9): e1910490. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9518798/
• The Commonwealth Fund. (2022). Male Physicians Earn More Than Women in Both Primary and Specialty Care. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2022/male-physicians-earn-more-women-primary-and-specialty-care
• STAT News. (2016). The Hidden Pay Gap Between White and Black Physicians. https://www.statnews.com/2016/06/07/physician-pay-gap/
• Healthcare Dive. (2023). Physician Gender Pay Gap Narrows Slightly, but Racial Disparities Persist. https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/physician-gender-pay-gap-narrows-compensation-medscape/

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